


pineapple

by ghosthunter



Series: sweat, saltwater, surfboard wax [2]
Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Surfers, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-22
Updated: 2017-08-22
Packaged: 2018-12-18 20:20:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,727
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11882091
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ghosthunter/pseuds/ghosthunter
Summary: “See, there’s guys out here giving lessons every day,” Dima is saying. Sasha hasn’t been listening to him, not really, because he’s been talking about surfing again. This is the hill Dima has decided to die on on this vacation. Kuzya is asleep on Sasha’s other side, face down on the sand. Sasha has balanced Kuzya’s sunglasses on the back of Kuzya’s head. Serves him right for falling right to sleep.





	pineapple

**Author's Note:**

> basically: sex wax from ovi's pov. 
> 
>  
> 
> somebody created a monster. it wasn't me, i am the monster. thanks to lanie for beta, donya for cheerleading. you know, the usual suspects out here.

If Sasha is honest, and Sasha has the tendency to be dreadfully honest, then he doesn’t see the appeal of surfing. He’s not even really that big a fan of the beach. He’d much rather prefer to be sitting poolside, swimming in water where he can see what he’s stepping on and not having to worry about all the sand that he wakes up with in his sheets in the morning.

“See, there’s guys out here giving lessons every day,” Dima is saying. Sasha hasn’t been listening to him, not really, because he’s been talking about surfing again. This is the hill Dima has decided to die on on this vacation. Kuzya is asleep on Sasha’s other side, face down on the sand. Sasha has balanced Kuzya’s sunglasses on the back of Kuzya’s head. Serves him right for falling right to sleep.

“It looks exhausting,” Sasha says, leaning back on his elbows on his beach towel. Not that he couldn’t use the exercise - they’ve been swimming in the ocean a couple of times since they got to America, but it’s not the same as actually working out.

“Does it not look fun to you?” Dima asks, and then kicks sand over Sasha’s feet. Sasha looks over to where people are clearly getting surfing lessons.

The lessons are one on one, and there are three teachers. There’s a short one with long hair, working with a kid that can’t be more than sixteen. There’s also a huge blonde guy who looks like he’s an underwear model in his spare time, teaching a girl who’s looking at him with hearts in her eyes so big that Sasha can see them from where he’s sitting.

Sasha watches the last guy, with wavy blonde hair. He seems to be doing the best of the three of them at teaching, or maybe his learner has just had more lessons than the others. But it’s not about that. It’s about the way the guy looks, sitting astride his board, carefully explaining what needs to be done. Sasha thinks that, if this guy were teaching him, Sasha could definitely learn to surf.

“Fine,” Sasha finally says. “But I want him to be the one to teach me.”

 

 

The surfer guy is even better up close. Objectively, Sasha knows that he’s being ridiculous, because the guy has a pointy face and looks like he’s going to murder the next person that dares to speak to him, but Sasha has also seen him out on the water looking like some beautiful, bronzed god of surfing - and that’s even with standing next to the other blonde, bronzed underwear model of surfing.

Sasha loves him.

“Please stop talking,” Kuzya says, because Sasha is oops maybe waxing poetic about the surfing instructor again.

“Anyway, he called and said that we should meet them at the shop at 4 on Saturday,” Sasha says. “And you two can fight over the other two instructors but he’s doing my lesson, because he’s _better_.”

Kuzya throws a french fry in his face.

“Hey,” he protests.

“I asked nicely,” Kuzya says. “But no. You just go on and on in spite of my actually very polite request - Sasha, are you listening?”

“No, he’s daydreaming about his surfing instructor,” Dima says. This time, it’s Sasha who throws a fry at Dima’s face. “It’s like nobody raised either of you. Who throws food?”

“Sasha,” Kuzya says at the same time Sasha says, “Kuzya.”

“I wish I’d gone on vacation somewhere else,” Dima tells him.

 

The surfing instructor’s name is Nick, and when he brushes past Sasha, he smells like a mixture of weed and pineapple, which Sasha figures is both weird and unsurprising at the same time. He would’ve guessed coconut, but the way Nick’s face is sunburned across the bridge of his nose speaks to a lack of dedicated sunscreen use.

And truthfully, Sasha isn’t even sure that Nick is interested in men, let alone him, even though he’s for sure watched Nick go a little dopey when faced with Sasha with no shirt on - Sasha knows he’s an acquired taste with his clothes on, with his crooked nose and missing tooth, but he also knows what he looks like with his shirt off, and that it’s good. He’s definitely seen Nick looking.

Nick is also a saint, because apparently not only has he pulled strings to get Sasha and his friends a lesson at the same time, for which he owes Underwear Model Lars dinner, but he then proceeds to pull even more strings to get them into a restaurant when it turns out all of them - Sasha and his friends, the three instructors, and one instructor boyfriend - are going to dinner together.

Of course, their waiter threatens Nick as soon as they walk in, and over dinner, Sasha finds out that their waiter is actually Nick’s roommate, who Nick now owes both money and weed.

Sasha orders dessert and shares with Nick, and they talk about how Sasha ended up in town and why. It’s not that interesting of a story, really. Kuzya goes to school at the university, the same one where Nick is finishing his degree, where John’s in a frat. Sasha’s just graduated, and he’s taking an extended vacation before he goes back to Russia and the job that’s waiting for him.

California is much more interesting than the job he’s going home to, honestly. He likes the casual familiarity of sitting at the restaurant table with his friends, these new friends. He’s never going to be a surfer, but maybe he doesn’t hate the beach.

“I can’t believe you didn’t ask him out,” Kuzya says to him when they’re on the way back to the apartment. Kuzya’s a little drunk, and Dima’s half asleep, and they have their arms twined around each other, weaving slowly as they walk down the sidewalk.

“What, in front of everyone?” Sasha says.

“Yes, in front of everyone. Are you fucking shy?” Kuzya asks.

“I mean,” Sasha says. “I’m not, but I’m also not going to be like hey man, you wanna go get dinner? In front of every person we know.”

“It’s not _every_ person we know,” Dima says.

“You’re literally everyone I know in California,” Sasha says.

“I’m sure he knows other people,” Dima says.

“You’re everyone I know in California and I wish I didn’t,” Sasha says.

They just laugh at him.

 

 

The next morning, his muscles are sore and Kuzya is hung over, so naturally Sasha makes Kuzya come to the beach with him. He is definitely going to ask NIck out, he just has to make sure that it’s the right time. Normally, he wouldn’t take Kuzya because he doesn’t need help from the peanut gallery but it’s a move calculated to maximize Kuzya’s suffering.

They leave Dima sleeping and grab coffee on the way down to the beach, where they spread out their towels. There are a few surfers out already, and Sasha is still sipping his cup of coffee when TJ and John walk by, waving at Sasha as they head out to the waves. He wants to ask if Nick is coming, but he doesn’t want to seem desperate.

Kuzya’s never going to let him hear the end of it if Nick doesn’t even show up.

He does, though, walking with his roommate down the sand. Sasha notices the sharp elbow that Marcus jabs into Nick’s ribs, because he’s been on the receiving end of it from both Kuzya and Dima before.

Nick is quiet, looking at him, and then Sasha realize he’s _looking_ , as in checking Sasha out.

“Hey,” Nick finally says, breaking the silence between them. He sounds tired. He looks hung-over.

“How was party last night?” Sasha asks.

“It was a frat party,” Nick says, and he shrugs, raises a hand up and runs it through his tangled hair. 

“Is like in movies?” Sasha asks. He’s never been to a frat party, but the movies that he’s seen always make it look like a good time. He doubts that frat parties are actually that good.

“I don’t think so,” Nick says. They go silent again, and it starts to get awkward before Nick turns to look over his shoulders at the waves, toward his friends, toward his routine and away from Sasha. Now’s Sasha’s chance, if he’s going to take it.

“Do you want to go to lunch with me?” Sasha asks, and Nick whips back toward him, his eyes a little wide.

“What?” Nick asks.

“Lunch. Do you want to go, just me and you?” Sasha says. Nick just blinks at him, like he’s confused.

And then, “oh.”

Sasha’s heart sinks. He must have read things wrong, must have misunderstood the way Nick was looking at him. Usually Sasha’s so good at that - careful, too, because he has to be back home in Russia.

“I mean, I thought - you don’t have to,” Sasha says quickly. He wants to give Nick the out, get this interaction over with.

“No,” Nick finally says. “I mean, yes, I want to go. But I have to open the shop at noon.”

It’s a disappointment. He’s getting turned down, but at least Nick is doing it gently. “Oh,” he says. Now he wishes that Nick would keep walking, go out into the waves and leave Sasha on the beach to die.

“But dinner, maybe?” Nick says, and Sasha feels his heart do a backflip. He’s not a total embarrassment. He’s not going to have to hear about this from Kuzya for the rest of his life, and then from Dima when Kuzya inevitably tells him about it.

“Sure,” Sasha says. “Dinner. I come and pick you up at shop?”

“Sure,” Nick says, then smiles. Sasha leans back on his elbow and watches as Nick turns around and wades into the ocean.

“You’re a fucking disaster,” Kuzya says, once Nick is out of earshot.

“Shut up,” Sasha says. “I got a date.”

 

 

By the time Sasha is sitting on a borrowed surfboard in the ocean on Monday morning, he’s really regretting his decision to go back to Russia for work. He doesn’t, actually, want to leave Nick. Nick, who took him to dinner and let Sasha kiss him, who wears a threadbare sweatshirt to walk on the beach, who put on Sasha’s shirt to go and get both of them coffee, who won’t let Sasha call him Kolya.

Nick, who pinned his wrists to the bed and fucked Sasha until he was gasping. Who is sitting a couple of feet from Sasha even now, his hair wet and plastered around his cheeks and forehead.

Not that Sasha would ever be so dramatic, but he’s pretty sure that he’s in love. Or at the very least, deeply, deeply in lust.

 

 

Everything’s great. For a week of dinners and late nights and sitting on the balcony at Nick’s apartment passing a joint back and forth - and the sex. The sex is great and Sasha is genuinely a little upset that he’s at the end of his time in California and he’s going to have to leave.

The day before his flight comes faster than he wants.

He wakes up in Nick’s sweatshirt, his arm thrown across Nick’s waist in Nick’s bed and Nick’s mouth on his. Nick isn’t even getting up to go surfing.

Sasha still has to pack up his shit, because Dima has already informed Sasha that he’s not doing it for him, so after they grab breakfast, Sasha leaves, reluctantly, to go back to the apartment he shares with Kuzya and Dima - for about sixteen more hours.

They’re both packing up - Kuzya will move back into his regular apartment, one bedroom and just enough for as much time as Kuzya spends there, and Dima will go back to Russia with Sasha. Sasha is quiet amongst their chatter, and eventually, Kuzya cracks.

“Okay,” he says. “We’re going to the surf shop.”

“Huh?” Sasha says.

“I’m tired of your sighing,” Kuzya says. “You walk around and you sigh like your life is ending. And I’m tired of listening to you sigh. So let’s go.”

Sasha’s pretty sure if he didn’t immediately head for the door, Kuzya would have forced him out physically. He’s not sure that Kuzya could actually take him in a fight, but Kuzya looks so irritated that Sasha doesn’t want to try him. He’s also not sure that Dima wouldn’t help Kuzya.

Kuzya physically shoves him through the door of the surf shop, which Sasha doesn’t particularly appreciate, but which he’ll let slide - for now.

“Thank God,” Kuzya says when he sees Nick standing there. Nick frowns at him, but that’s not about to stop Kuzya in his single-minded pursuit of getting Sasha to stop irritating the shit out of him.. “This one moping all day because he leaving.” He actually shoves Sasha toward Nick.. “Go to dinner and get him out of my hair.”

Dima is a fucking traitor who laughs at them then. “I have to live whole plane flight with him,” Dima says, and Sasha resolves right then to put Dima out of his misery. Then he only has to live part of the plane flight with Sasha.

“On second thought,” Kuzya says. “You keep him and I go back to Russia. Okay? Thank you. Have fun at dinner kids. Be home by ten ‘cause have to leave for airport at terrible hour.”

Sasha is not 100% going to kill Kuzya for this. He is 300% going to kill Kuzya for this. He’s going to kill him so hard, Kuzya will come back alive so Sasha can kill him again. Twice. But not right now, because Kuzya is grabbing Dima by the wrist and dragging him toward the door.

They have the bad luck that Marcus is coming through the door right at that moment, and Kuzya slams into him, sending Marcus reeling backward. Kuzya lets go of Dima to grab at Marcus’s arm, keeping him from falling.

“Sorry, Nicke’s waiter friend. We just leaving Alex here for Nicke,” Kuzya says, then he and Dima are gone and leave Marcus standing in the doorway, looking at all of them, bewildered.

“What the fuck?” Marcus finally asks after a moment. Sasha can feel himself blushing, even as he’s standing there across the counter from Nick. Marcus stares at them a moment, and Sasha can see him take a deep breath. “I was going to ask if you wanted to go get drinks,” he finally says, “but I’m just going to… not… be at our apartment instead.”

Sasha looks at Nick, and Nick is blushing now, too.

“Uh huh,” Marcus says. “Nevermind. Bye!”

Sasha doesn’t need to look to know that Marcus leaves.

“Do you want to get dinner? Or do you want to go - “ Nick starts to ask, but Sasha cuts him off, leaning across the counter and fitting their mouths together.

They don’t get dinner. They do go back to Nick’s apartment, where Marcus is not. And sure, Sasha doesn’t get back to the apartment he’s sharing with Kuzya and Dima until after eleven, which is later than Kuzya had demanded, but he keeps his complaining to a minimum when they’re up at 4 in the morning to leave for the airport, anyway.

 

Sasha really fucking hates his job.

He’s not sure if it’s genuinely as bad as he feels like it is, between getting up every day and putting on a suit mostly to be a glorified personal assistant, and absolutely in no way using his degree at all, or if he just hates it because it’s on the other side of the universe from Nick.

They talk, occasionally, messaging each other on the internet because the time difference is almost too much to overcome. Sasha never complains about his job and how much he hates it, how much he wishes he could just move back to California permanently. Even Sasha knows that would be too much to throw at Nick, and if he did, Sasha wouldn’t blame Nick for running away screaming.

Still, Sasha thinks about it. Looks for jobs in the area. In the meantime, he lets Nick talk about the class that he hates, lets him stress about how he’s afraid he’s going to fail something then not graduate in June like he’s supposed to, lets him worry about whether or not he really is going to commit to going to grad school.

Sasha makes his mind up, because even if he and Nick don’t stay together, he hates his job. He misses California and Kuzya and Nick and surfing, even though he’s terrible at it. He tells Dima over dinner one night, that he’s thinking of leaving.

“Oh fine, just ditch me here,” Dima says.

“You could just finish school there,” Sasha tells him.

“No,” Dima says. “I’m going to finish here. I’ll come visit for the summer, though.”

“You can stay with me,” Sasha says.

“Sure, in your imaginary apartment you don’t even have yet,” Dima says.

“I will have,” Sasha says. They’re quiet, for a while, sipping drinks in silence, while a hockey game runs in the background on Sasha’s tv.

“Are you really going to go?” Dima asks.

“Yeah. Yeah, I am,” Sasha says.

 

 

By the time he slumps into Kuzya’s passenger seat, Sasha is exhausted. He’s also overdressed, because his brain thought “Winter” but it thought “Russian Winter” and now he’s sweating in California in an actual coat while Kuzya’s sitting next to him wearing a long-sleeved t-shirt and Sasha is going to really, truly have to re-think his life.

“How was your flight?” Kuzya asks as they head back to his apartment. Sasha’s going to have to find his own place to stay - he and Kuzya might end up living together, he doesn’t know yet, hasn’t decided, hasn’t thought that far into the future.

“Long,” Sasha says. He’s so fucking tired, but somehow wired all at the same time. He’s in the same city as Nick again, finally.

“So here’s the plan,” Kuzya says, because of course he’s got some kind of grand plan and scheme. He’s told Sasha all about how Nick has been sulking around without Sasha there. “You're gonna get some sleep tonight. Tomorrow, I’m going to go get Nick from work and then bring him to my place. You’re gonna make him something romantic for dinner, and then I’m going to go spend the night at Nick and Marcus’s apartment.”

“You really planned this out,” Alex says.

“Yeah, I fucking did,” Kuzya says. “Because I’m romantic like that. And I love you, and you’ve been irritating since the second you met Nick.”

Sasha laughs at him.

 

 

Kuzya isn’t kidding about how Sasha’s going to make dinner for Nick, but there are two problems. 

The first is that Kuzya doesn’t actually have any food in his apartment that isn’t cereal or condiments (and frozen things in the freezer that Kuzya’s mother apparently made when she visited that Sasha is not allowed to touch, thank-you-very-much), so before Sasha can make anything, they have to hit the grocery store. The second issue is that nothing Sasha knows how to make is very romantic, because most things he knows how to make he learned from his mother or grandmothers.

Kuzya tells him that it’s romantic for Sasha to prepare the food of his forebears for Nick, which makes Sasha roll his eyes. Kuzya reminds Sasha that he has to take the reusable grocery bags to the store, and they’re by the door, then Kuzya is off to class and, presumably, to bring Nick home to Sasha.

The worst part is that Sasha only has a vague idea of when Kuzya will show up with Nick, so it leaves him alone all day with his anxiety. He’s been talking to Nick since he went back to Russia, and presumably Kuzya has too, but what if NIck isn’t into this?

He can’t let himself dwell on that, so he starts cooking. He’s in the kitchen when he hears the front door open.

“Kuzya, what time are you bringing him here?” Sasha calls out from the kitchen.

“Right now,” Kuzya calls back, and Sasha turns away from the stove.

“Alex,” Nicke says. His eyes are wide, and Sasha doesn’t know what Kuzya told him to get him here, but it certainly wasn’t that Sasha was going to be there waiting for him.

“Surprise,” Sasha says, and grins.

Nick absolutely trips over himself trying to get to Sasha, and if Sasha doubted for a second that Nick didn’t want him, the way Nick throws himself into Sasha’s arms would erase that. Sasha wraps his arms around Nick tightly, squeezes him tight.

“What are you doing here?” Nick asks once Sasha loosens his hold slightly.

“Hated job that I took. Decided I’m come here and work, instead,” Sasha tells him. “Then maybe I’m able to be with you.”

“Oh,” Nick says. There’s a pause so brief that Sasha doesn’t even have time to start to panic. Then he says, “yes.”

Sasha grins at him, and Nick smiles back.

“Hey Sasha,” Kuzya says. “Not to interrupt, but I’m going now.”

Kuzya closes the door - with a bang, loud on purpose. Sasha fits his mouth against Nick’s.

“Sit down, I make dinner for us,” Sasha tells him. “Kuzya say he staying with Marcus, so we alone.”

“He really planned this out,” Nick says, but makes no move to go and sit down. “He told me he had a Christmas present for me. I didn’t. I didn’t expect this. I really didn’t expect you to move here.”

“I hated job there,” Sasha tells him again. “And I’m think I love you, so would rather be here anyway.”

“You,” Nick says, his eyes wide. “You love me.”

“You don’t have to say back,” Sasha says quickly. “I know is a lot.”

“I do, though,” Nick says, before Sasha can get another word out. “Love you. Maybe. I don’t know. I think about it a lot. I think - “

Sasha kisses him again, because there’s too much about thinking, and not enough about doing.

“Don’t burn dinner,” Nick says, pulling back after a moment.

“I won’t,” Sasha says. He leans in and kisses Nick one more time, before Nick goes to sit on the couch, and Sasha turns back to dinner on the stove.


End file.
